


The Feeling Fades, A Waste

by bantha fodder (banthafodder)



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Post-Ragnarok, Ragnarok, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Wall Sex, shadows as metaphor, what even is this i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banthafodder/pseuds/bantha%20fodder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She goes training regardless. No world stops for one woman, no matter her skills. </i> Sif/Loki, post-Ragnarok, and the knowledge that something is wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Feeling Fades, A Waste

**Author's Note:**

> Naught but an excuse for wall sex after Ragnarok. I have no one to blame but myself.

She wakes up, presses her tongue to her lips. 

Her skin is tight, and when she stretches it pulls, the feeling of scars where none should be. She looks at her arm but it is bare, free of marks, and she frowns. The pressure of the air around her is thick, and something, something is wrong. Something has shifted, ever so slightly, and as she goes about her day she glances suspiciously at the shadows before her eyes slide away.

There's something off, and she knows it.

She goes training regardless. No world stops for one woman, no matter her skills. 

**

She skirts forwards, and her epee presses against Horn even as his glances past her shoulder. She doesn't pause and she doesn't blink; she tilts her shoulder away, follows the weave of the epee, and follows up with a kick to send Horn flying. As she watches Horn fall awkwardly to the mats and struggle to get up again from his landing position, as if he'd never before learnt how to fall and regain, she wonders where it came from. The knowledge of it sits comfortably on her shoulders, but she knows it wasn't there five minutes ago. 

The weight of her epee feels wrong in her hand, though she's been holding it fair half of her life, and she's holding it wrong, she swears, even as she looks down at her hand and knows that she is on the national team, that she knows perfectly fucking well how to hold her weapon.

Her equipment. She knows how to hold her equipment, and she wonders where the other end of it is. 

Her coach yells her name, the referee sends her off. She waves and accepts that she has lost this competition. As her coach asks her what's wrong, his hand heavy on her shoulder, the shame of failure weaves its way around her heart. She sees shadows out of the corner of her eye, and when she turns to look at them they disappear. "I'm sorry," she says, and means it. 

He sends her on a break all the same, but they know what it is: a suspension. 

**

She goes to sit on a beach in the sun; falls asleep and wakes up with dreams of flames and the sound of crackling wood. She opens her eyes and sits up with a gasp, panting, her hand flexing for her glaive. It takes her a moment for her to realise the sun is setting, flooding the sky with red; and the waves are hitting the shore as the tide comes in and slapping deserted sand castles beneath its water. 

And she does not own a glaive; it is an ancient weapon, and she is a modern sportswoman.

She blinks. 

Rising out of the ocean is a silhouette, and she focuses on it as she brings her breath back in towards herself; dismisses the heat on her skin as nothing more than sunburn, though she swears she can still feel the flames licking at her back. 

The silhouette becomes a man, lean and thin and tall and looming, and he smirks at her; raises an eyebrow at her. She thinks to look away, she would usually look away; instead she toasts him with her drink bottle before she takes a swig to rehydrate herself. 

"You're a little burnt," he says, as she stretches through her shoulders, and she swears she hears smug weaving through his voice. 

"You're a little nosy," she retorts, and it's only after he shrugs, replies, "so I am," and turns away that she realises he might possibly have been flirting. 

She's no good at any of this, she thinks, and watches the shadows creep up as the sun sets. When she shivers in the twilight, she reaches for her towel and heads back in, slowly. 

She's cold, but she's been colder.

**

She sees the swimmer again when she's grabbing something greasy from a late night takeaway near her hotel, and when he catches her eye and winks at her she thinks, why not; dismisses the twisting in her gut as disbelief that she's attempting to embark on a holiday fling, rather than the warning (greeting?) she will later recognise. 

She saunters across the road and leans next to him on the wall; takes a bite and ends up with half a prawn in her mouth, its barbecued juices running down her chin. She laughs. 

"You are charming," he says. sarcastically, off-hand, his body at ease next to her. She thinks she has never seen him so relaxed; which is ridiculous, because she has never met him before. 

"It's the food," she says; offers him a bite. He looks at her remaining prawns as if perhaps she is trying to poison him; picks up a prawn daintily by its tail and sucks it into his mouth with a crunch. He licks his lips and she thinks, yes, okay. 

He's wearing a tie, despite the heat, and she teases him; when she makes him laugh, images flicker in the corner of her eyes, and for a moment she thinks his skin is blue beneath her hand on his wrist; but when she looks again it is just his heartbeat and the light tan of a man who has risen from under the sea. 

Oh yes, she thinks, and moves to kiss him, and he kisses her back.

The door of the night club the next streetlight down opens, and the music and laughter spills out with the light into the night air, and when he brushes his hands against her bare skin she shivers. His fingers are cold. 

The music pushes down upon her, the bass heavy in her ears. His tie, so ridiculous, becomes an aid, and she pulls him further in until they are flush against each other and her heart beats with the music. 

He grins down at her, and when his eyes flicker sideways she sees shadows, and a tiny alley running alongside, and she thinks, well, why not. 

The alley is dark and rimmed with red, and from the corner of her eyes it looks like flames. She blinks, but the image stays with her, and she pulls him closer to cover up her pause. He kisses like he's trying to eat her alive, and she kisses back the same. She'll not be bested by some stranger far from home. 

He groans against her throat when she presses against him and she feels him, hot and hard against her thigh. She strokes him through his pants and his swift intake of breath hits her hard. He rucks her shirt up and mouths at her breast, his tongue firm against her nipple; she reaches for his pants and feels his laughter vibrate through her skin. "I know we are here in a terrible back alley," he says, humour clear in his voice, "but I doubt we need to be quite that rapid." He reaches for hers instead, and she watches with hooded eyes as he pushes her pants down and his breath is warm against her thigh. "This first," he says, and then his tongue is against her clit, and she moans, pulls him closer. 

She doesn't question this, a stranger in an alley, not when her week started so weird and just kept going, and she closes her eyes to keep the shadows at bay. 

Her orgasm builds beneath her, hair under her hands and bricks at her back, still warm from the sun but they feel hot so hot, hot like there is a fire within, and with her orgasm comes the realisation all at once of the flames at Yggdrasil's base and the shadows and Ragnarok and Loki, the Trickster, on his knees before her. 

"By Odin's eye," Sif says aloud. Her voice sounds hoarse, like she's been yelling out warnings and filling her mouth with smoke. Laughter rises from him, and Sif blinks down at him, meets his bright eyes, and the familiar feelings of revulsion and betrayal and love and lust bubble up inside of her, as they have for centuries. "Loki," she breathes out, and he tilts his head a little, like maybe in the distance he can hear the ringing of steel upon steel and smell the tree burning around them. 

"Well," he says, condescending but maybe a little unsure, "if that's how you thank someone, the wrong name on your lips after having you on mine." He sneers, and it's close, so close; she grins as she debates what to do. 

"Wait just one moment and you'll understand why it's so appropriate," she bites out, and she cannot hold back the laughter and the joy and the anger as she reaches for him again, pulls him up flush until she feels him hard against her. She fumbles for his pants; grasps his cock and she hopes this is not the only way, for she'll not do this for Volstagg; swallows his suggestion - "uh, a condom," he grinds out, and she bites his lip and they are gods stuck in mortal bodies and she is impatient, she will not be alone a moment longer, not when she feels the strength in her hands and the limitations of these bodies, but they are limitations all the same, and she knows that even like this he is still an argumentative, sly fool. She fumbles for the condom and considers for half a second if it would be faster to slide onto her knees and take him in hand, as it were; but she is a warrior and she will not kneel before him, not again. She pulls him closer instead, and breathes in his gasp as he slips inside of her, and she bites his shoulder as his hands rest, slightly chilled against her waist. He moves against her then, and groans into her mouth as they kiss, all teeth as they clash, and she digs her nails into his shoulder. 

She knows the moment he returns to himself, feels him freeze up around her and she holds on, keeps him steady. "Well," he says, his lips cool against her ear and his voice sending a familiar shudder down her spine. His tone is cold, careless and calculating, and she curses herself that she could have been so stupid, could have forgotten to plan for what comes next, in those five seconds between realising and acting. She is caught by surprise when he starts moving inside of her again. "Don't think we're stopping quite yet, my lady," he says. She laughs. 

He is the Trickster, and she will make him pay for what he has done; but for now, she remembers herself, and he is a familiar face, and that is enough. 

When Sif comes again, she gasps, and Loki laughs.


End file.
